SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: THE VACANT LOTS – INTERIORS

THE VACANT LOTS
INTERIORS
FUZZ CLUB RECORDS

Brooklyn synth-tronic band, The Vacant Lots, have released their fifth studio album, Interiors, a collection of eight ominous thumpers with stony vocals and titles like “Amnesia”, “Ashes”, “Evacuation”, “Destruction”, “Scars” and “Damaged Goods” making up six of the eight tracks here. But while the ominous vibes of the album may seem apparent before pushing play, the music that follows is strangely, satisfyingly grisly yet oddly buoyant. A strange brew indeed.

Anyone looking at the various Vacant Lots’ album art through the years has no doubt noticed the black and white color scheme to each one: geometric shapes and patterns that suggest opposites and balance and paradox and mystery all at the same time, and Interiors continues the theme. But what’s interesting about the covers is also interesting about the music. Are you drawn to the black or the white? The form or the content? Luckily, The Vacant Lots are a chiaroscuro dance party, basking in both.

In the second track “Paradise” (one of only two with a title that could be considered “positive”), while the vocals across the album are ghostly and detached, we see the trick of antithesis and contrast that exists between title and lyrics, vocals and soundscape, and which defines the album as a whole and perhaps the project of the band itself—to live in the contrasts, to embrace the antithesis. Lyrics like “Paradise leads to pain/in the summer/in the winter/fallen inside out/fallen six feet down” are somewhat dark, heavy with images of death, but the song itself (like several others) quickly rises into something almost sultry.

Later in the album, “Destruction” stands out for being more groovy and less ominous than the others in sound, but the lyrics, should you listen closely, act as a counterbalance:

“Nothing seems to turn out right/
Fires in the city/
Chaos from a great divide/
Division over contemplation/
Evil action but they call it divine.”

In this instance, even the lyrics themselves allude to an inversion or antithesis, as evil is confused for divinity. Still, the music itself, up on the surface, with its pulsating beats and searing synth guitars, remains as torrid as ever.

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